Method of delivery, targeting, and measuring advertising over networks

ABSTRACT

Methods and apparatuses for targeting the delivery of advertisements over a network such as the Internet are disclosed. Statistics are compiled on individual users and networks and the use of the advertisements is tracked to permit targeting of the advertisements of individual users. In response to requests from affiliated sites, an advertising server transmits to people accessing the page of a site an appropriate one of the advertisement based upon profiling of users and networks.

CROSS-REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATIONS

This is a divisional of U.S. patent application Ser. No. 10/254,923,filed on Sep. 26, 2002, pending, which is a continuation of U.S. patentapplication Ser. No. 09/293,463, filed on Apr. 15, 1999, abandoned,which is a continuation of U.S. patent application Ser. No. 08/738,634,filed on Oct. 29, 1996, issued as U.S. Pat. No. 5,948,061, currently inreissue under Reissue application Ser. No. 09/577,798, filed May 24,2000.

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION

1. Area of the Art

This invention relates to methods of delivery of advertisements andmeasuring responses to those delivered advertisements and in particularrelates to the targeting of advertisements delivered over networks suchas the Internet.

2. Description of the Prior Art

In advertising, it is considered highly desirable to targetadvertisements to the appropriate potential customer base, rather thanto broadcast advertisements in general. It has long been known that, forexample, advertisements for computers should generally not appear inmagazines on gardening and, conversely, advertisements for gardeningtools should not appear in magazines on computers. Similarly,advertisers have generally targeted their advertisements on televisionto programs appropriate for the desired customer base.

It has also long been known that an advertisement that is repeated toooften will eventually become ignored by consumers. Therefore, anadvertiser typically wishes to eliminate duplication and reach as manyindividuals in the advertiser's target group as possible.

The recent development of on-line networks, such as America On-Line,Compuserve, and the Internet, has led to “on-line” advertising. Forexample, on the Internet, often such on-line advertisements will appearon a web page, such as a banner on the top or the bottom of the page.When the user views a web page using a browser such as Internet Explorer3 or Netscape 3, the banner appears at the appropriate location and theuser may then try to find out more information regarding theadvertisement by selecting the advertisement (clicking through on thatbanner) through the use of the mouse or other pointing device. This willcause a HTTP message to be generated by the browser using theinformation encapsulated in association with the banner to send arequest for an object with a given URL address to a differentappropriate web site to access, for example, the advertiser's home page.

Nonetheless, such advertising has had, so far, a poor rate of responsebecause it is untargeted advertising. Thus, someone who is totallyuninterested in computers other than they happen to be on the Internet,may continually see advertisements for computers. On the other hand,someone who is interested in computers may continually seeadvertisements for gardening tools when browsing through a particularweb site. Thus it would be highly desirable to have a method oftargeting the advertising to the appropriate user.

In addition, if a user of such computer networks is continuously exposedto the same advertisement, the response rate to the advertisement willgenerally decline. Therefore, it is highly desirable to have a systemthat controls the frequency of exposure of advertisements to particularusers. In addition, it is also important for the advertisers to trackresponse to the advertisements and to acquire as much information aboutthose people responding to the advertisements for targeting those samepeople at later dates.

Therefore, it is a first object of this invention to provide targetingof advertising over networks such as the Internet. It is a second objectof this invention to provide control over frequency of exposure to usersfor advertisements appearing on web pages over time. It is a thirdobject of the invention to provide the capability to gather informationabout recipients of the advertisement.

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION

These and other objects of the invention are achieved by the disclosedsystem and methods. Information about networks and subnetworks isroutinely collected. In addition, information about individual users isalso gathered when users select (click on) different advertisements.Also, data is tracked on how often a given advertisement has beendisplayed, how often a given user has seen a given advertisement, andother information regarding the user and the frequency of the display ofthe advertisement.

To effect such a capability, an advertising server process is providedas a node on the network. The various advertisements are stored on thenetwork of the server and preferably on the server. When, for example, auser using a web browser accesses a web page that is affiliated with theadvertising server process, the affiliated page's encoding includes anembedded reference to an object provided by the advertising serverprocess. That causes the user's browser to contact the advertisingserver process to provide the advertising image or information that willappear on the accessed web page as displayed by the user's browser.Using the address information and/or other information passed by thebrowser for the user, including the page being accessed by the user, theadvertising server process determines an appropriate advertisement toselect for the particular user. In addition, the advertising serverprocess will use information such as the number of times the user hasseen various advertisements, how often the advertisement has been seenby any user and the start and stop date for the various advertisementsto select which advertisement to transmit to the user's web page fordisplay.

If the user decides to respond to the advertisement selected by the webserver by clicking on the advertisement, the advertising server processlogs that fact and to have more information about the given user. Aderive profile process is used for compiling information on TCP/IPnetworks for use by the advertising server process. By compiling theinformation on networks and user selections, the advertising serverprocess is able to compile information that can be used for targetingadvertising.

DESCRIPTION OF THE FIGURES

FIG. 1 is diagram for explaining a first embodiment of the invention.

FIG. 2 is a diagram explaining the processes performed in the preferredembodiments.

FIGS. 3A, 3B and 3C are diagrams showing the basic structure of some ofthe databases kept by the advertising server.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION

The basic architecture of the network 10 comprises at least oneaffiliate web site 12, an advertisement (ad) server web site 19 and oneor more individual advertiser's web sites 18. Affiliates are one or moreentities that generally for a fee contract with the entity providing theadvertisement server permit third party advertisements to be displayedon their web sites. When a user using a browser accesses or “visits” aweb site of an affiliate, an advertisement provided by the advertisementserver 19 will be superimposed on the display of the affiliate's webpage displayed by the user's browser. Examples of appropriate affiliatesinclude locator services, service providers, and entities that havepopular web sites such as museums, movie studios, etc.

The basic operation of the system is as follows in the preferredembodiment. When a user browsing on the Internet accesses an affiliate'sweb site 12, the user's browser generates an HTTP message 20 to get theinformation for the desired web page. The affiliate's web site inresponse to the message 20 transmits one or more messages back 22containing the information to be displayed by the user's browser. Inaddition, an advertising server process 19 will provide additionalinformation comprising one or more objects such as banner advertisementsto be displayed with the information provided from the affiliate website. Normally, the computers supporting the browser, the affiliate website and the advertising server process will be at entirely differentnodes on the Internet. Upon clicking through or otherwise selecting theadvertisement object, which may be an image such as an advertisementbanner, an icon, or a video or an audio clip, the browser ends up beingconnected to the advertiser's server or web site 18 for thatadvertisement object.

In FIG. 1, a user operates a web browser, such as Netscape or MicrosoftInternet Explorer, on a computer or PDA or other Internet capable device16 to generate through the hypertext transfer protocol (HTTP) 14 arequest 20 to any one of preferably a plurality of affiliate web sites12. The affiliate web site sends one or more messages back 22 using thesame protocol. Those messages 22 preferably contain all of theinformation available at the particular web site 12 for the requestedpage to be displayed by the user's browser 16 except for one or moreadvertising objects such as banner advertisements. These objectspreferably do not reside on the affiliate's web server. Instead, theaffiliate's web server sends back a link including an IP address for anode running an advertiser server process 19 as well as informationabout the page on which the advertisement will be displayed. The link byway of example may be a hypertext markup language (HTML)<img> tag,referring to, for example, an inline image such as a banner. The user'sbrowser 16 then transmits a message 23 using the received IP address toaccess such an object indicated by the HTML tag from the advertisementserver 19. Included in each message 23 typically to the advertisingserver 19 are: (i) the user's IP address, (ii) a cookie if the browser16 is cookie enabled and stores cookie information, (iii) a substringkey indicating the page in which the advertisement to be provided fromthe server is to be embedded, and (iv) MIME header informationindicating the browser type and version, the operating system of thecomputer on which the browser is operating and the proxy server type.Upon receiving the request in the message 23, the advertising serverprocess 19 determines which advertisement or other object to provide touser's browser and transmits the messages 24 containing the object suchas a banner advertisement to the user's browser 16 using the HTTPprotocol. Preferably contained within the HTTP message is a uniqueidentifier for the advertiser's web page appropriate for theadvertisement. That advertisement object is then displayed on the imagecreated by the web user's browser as a composite of the receivedaffiliate's web page plus the object transmitted back by the advertisingweb server.

As part of the “click through” process, when the user clicks on thebanner or other advertising object displayed by the user's browser 16,the user's browser again transmits a message to the ad server. The adserver notes the address of the computer of the browser (or any otheridentifier such as a cookie or a digital signature) that generated themessage 23 and transmits back the URL of the advertiser's web page sothat the user's web browser 16 generates a message 26 to contact theadvertiser's web site. 18. The ad server process 19 also notes that a“click through” for an advertisement has occurred and updates thevarious databases in the manner described below. In the above scenariofor the click through process, the ad server process must remember whichadvertisement was sent to the user's browser in order to know where toredirect the user's browser.

While in the above embodiments, the user is a computer on an IP networkusing a browser, the affiliate web sites are web pages of affiliateslocated somewhere on the Internet and the ad server is a particular nodeon the Internet, other setups are also possible. The affiliates may beISP's or may be actual dedicated web servers and the users may be anentire network instead of an individual browsing on a single computerwith a browser.

FIG. 2 shows the ad server architecture. The ad server, which maycomprise one or more servers uses a database 54 that will be describedbelow and performs reporting processes 59, management processes 58,derivation of profile processes 52 and advertisement processes 19. Thederive profile process 52 is how the advertisement server gathersinformation about individual users or TCP/IP networks for individualusers. Advertisements, which may be advertisement banners are storedwithin the ad server process 19 as part of the advertising serverprocess 19 and are periodically updated and refreshed. The advertisementserver process 19 is used for responding to requests from advertisementsprovided by the user's as described above. The management process 58 isused for updating the various advertisements and overall control of theadvertising server process 19 and also permits the advertisers tointerface with the database to obtain up to the date reports on theplacement of the advertisements. The report process 59 is used forgenerating online reports about the success rate of the advertisementand statistics on the users that are viewing and clicking through onvarious advertisements and also updating the counters in the databasethat store how often an advertisement has been displayed.

The basic database structure is shown in FIG. 3. For each useridentified by the system as shown in FIG. 3A, a user identification, IPaddress, domain type, time zone, location of the user, standardindustrial code for the user's network, the particular advertisementsseen and the number of times each such advertisement is seen, theadvertisements that were selected or “clicked on” and the pages on whichthe various users' advertisements were seen is collected. By using theinformation such as which advertisements a user has expressed interestin and which pages the user was viewing when the user clicked throughalong with other information, targeted Internet advertising is possible.

FIG. 3B shows a database structure for the advertisements. Included inthe information for an advertisement are an identifier for theadvertisement, the start date for the advertisement being carried, thelast date the advertisement is to be carried, the total number of peoplewho have viewed the advertisements, the target or the minimum number oftimes the advertisement is to be viewed, acceptable viewers by their website's SICS (Standard Industry Codes), clicked through and pages thatthe advertisements are seen on.

Also, as noted above, to enhance the process of identifying informationabout various users, information on domains or networks is also tracked.This information includes the domain name and type (e.g., military,government, commerce, foreign countries), the IP address, the standardindustrial code, the time zone and the address as shown in FIG. 3C. Thisinformation can be used in developing information about users. Throughthe use of these three databases and other appropriate databases thatmay be kept, the various processes of the advertising server process 19are performed.

Advertising Server Processes 19

In response to an incoming message to the advertising server process 19,the advertising server processes 19 first attempts to identify the userin FIG. 2. This can be accomplished by at least one of two means. First,any incoming request for an image or a multimedia object is examined todetermined the IP address of the requesting browser. The advertisingserver then notes whether a cookie was received in the MIME heading ofthe request. From these two pieces of information, a user identificationis determined. If a cookie was detected, then the cookie contains theuser's identification number that can be accessed in the database. Ifthe user's browser is cookie enabled but no cookie is detected, then therequest is from a new user so a user identification must be assigned tothe user and that user's new identification number will be transmittedback to the users browser along with a write cookie instruction thatcauses the browser to write a cookie containing that uniqueidentification number on the user's local drive for future accesses toaffiliate sites. The cookie instruction is transmitted back with theadvertisement messages 24. Alternatively, instead of using cookies,digital signatures or certificates or log ins uniquely identifying theuser accessing the affiliate page may be used.

If the user's browser does not support cookies, the advertising serverprocess looks up the user's IP address in a table that storesidentification numbers that correspond to IP addresses for the users whohave previously contacted the advertising server process. If the IPaddress is not found in the table, then the user is a new user and isassigned an unused identification number. Also, for each new user, thatuser's identification number will be marked for further processing underthe derive profile process 52 described below. Also, if the domain forthe new user has not previously been processed in the domain profileprocess, it may not be possible to target the advertisement for the newuser and rather the new user should be shown a generic advertisement.Also, for new users, a promotional advertisement may be shown to get thenew user to provide information about him or herself and his or heremployer.

If the user is an existing user, the ad server 19 obtains from adatabase all of the information known about the user including theuser's geographic location, the domain type (commercial educational,governmental, the Internet service provided), the organization typewhere the user works (for example a SIC code), the company size, thenumber of employees in that company, the particular types ofadvertisements that the user has clicked on by SIC or other appropriatecoding and the number of times that the user has been exposed to eachadvertisement currently in the system as described in FIG. 3A. Also, therelative time of day for the user is calculated based upon either theuser's country code or the user's IP access provider or the location oftheir domain.

Each advertisement along with a table of the targeting profile criteriafor the advertisement and other data regarding the advertisementcurrently available is stored in a database such as shown in FIG. 3B.The actual advertising object, which may be a banner image in a GIF orJPEG file format, an icon for an audio or video clip or some otherobject is kept as part of the advertising server process. Thisinformation may include targeted consumers by SIC, country, organizationtype and type of advertisements previously selected by the user. For anyof the advertisements currently provided for which there is a match (forexample there may be several advertisements targeted at peopleinterested in computers), the next step is to determine which of theadvertisements for which there is a match should be selected.

The preferred embodiment also includes determining which advertisingobject should be selected if two or more advertising object havecriteria matching the user. selecting from the matched advertisements bydetermining how often the particular user has been exposed to the givenadvertisement. For each user, data is kept about the number of timesthat a user has seen a given advertisement based upon the user ID. Foreach advertisement where the user matches the criteria, if the number oftimes that the user has seen the advertisement is less than apredetermined threshold, the advertisement is retained as one of thepossible matches. If the number of times that the user has seen a givenadvertisement exceeds the threshold, the advertisement is discarded as apossible candidate for transmitting back to the user.

From the advertisements for which the user matches the criteria and forwhich the user has seen the advertisement less than the threshold, anyof number of algorithms may be used to select the particularadvertisement to transmit back to the user. In an embodiment, theformula used is based upon a satisfaction index (SI) according to thefollowing formula:

${SI} = {\frac{n}{N}*\frac{{end}\text{-}{start}}{{now}\text{-}{start}}}$Where:

-   -   n: the number of times the particular advertisement has been        viewed by anyone    -   N: the number of times the advertisement is to be see by anyone    -   end-start: the total number of days that the advertisement is        scheduled to run    -   now-start: the number of days that the advertisement has run to        date

The satisfaction index (SI) is 1.0 when the advertisement is onschedule. If the advertisement is running behind schedule (i.e., thecurrent rate of display means that the advertisement will not be viewedthe targeted number of times by the end date so that the SI is less than1.0) while if the SI is greater than 1.0, the advertisement is runningahead of schedule. Therefore, the advertisement that is to be selectedfor viewing is the one that has a matched profile and has the smallestSI. Upon selecting the advertisement, the selected advertisement objectis then transmitted to the user's browser over the Internet bytransmitting the GIF stored in RAM in one or more messages.

After delivery of the advertisement to the user, additional processingneeds to be done both for tracking the exposure of the advertisement andfor having more information about the user. First, the system stores thefact that the advertisement was sent to the user by storing thatinformation in the database based upon the user ID. This information isused for processing the user's response to the advertisement when theuser “clicks” on the advertisement. Also, the advertising processorupdates the advertisements satisfaction index and logs the advertisementdelivery for providing reports. Also, if the advertisement that has beensent has a limit on the number of times that the advertisement can besent, the count of the number of times that the advertisement has beentransmitted is incremented. This limit can be the overall limit for thenumber of times that the advertisement is viewed and/or the limit thatany specific user can view the advertisement. If the limit on the numberof times the advertisement can be sent is reached, then the particularadvertisement is removed from the list of those that can be transmitted.In addition, even if an advertisement has not been transmitted recently,the SI is updated to reflect the passage of time.

If the user then decides that he wants to respond to the advertisementand then clicks on the advertisement, the advertisement server 19receives an HTTP request 23 for a click through which it will recognizeby receiving the same IP address (and optionally, the user ID specifiedby the cookie, digital signature or certificate or log inidentification) in the request from the same affiliate's web page withina predetermined period. Since the advertisement server previouslyrecorded which advertisement was sent to that IP address, it sends theredirect message causing the user's browser to receive the URL for theadvertiser's web site based upon data stored in the server. In addition,the server logs that the advertisement was clicked through, which userselected the advertisement based upon the IP address, and the page onwhich the advertisement was seen based upon the click through. Thisinformation can then be logged in later reporting processes 59.

As an alternative to using a satisfaction index, the selection of theparticular advertisement object to be sent back to the viewer's browserby the advertising server process 19 can be made by different criteria.For example, models can be created to maximize the likelihood of a clickthrough. Such models for maximizing the likelihood of a click throughmay be based upon empirically gathered information about either types ofadvertisements or individual advertisements actually on the systemcorrelated to the compiled information on a user or the user's networkand the specific page through which the user is accessing theadvertising server process 19.

Derivative Profile Process 52

In addition, as part of the profiling process for gathering informationabout users and IP addresses needs to be done. First, appropriate“networks” need to be identified based upon the TCP/IP network addressof the user. Periodically, the derive profiles process searches the userdatabase for the address of additional users that have addresses forunknown networks, indicating that they are new users. Then the serverdoes a reverse domain name search to locate the domain name of the user.The server also queries Internet Whols databases to find informationabout the network, which will often include the domain name.

Alternatively, a reverse form of look up can be used independent ofpeople accessing the network. When a domain is discovered, the serverwill check common DNS names for the name, such as those starting with“www” and “ftp”. These resolve to IP addresses in most cases. From theIP addresses, the network number can be extracted and if the networkdoes not yet have a domain name associated with the network number oraddress, the new domain associated with the network. A reverse domainname look up (A Whois lookup) will then usually provide the name,address and phone number of the organization, thereby providing thegeographic location and the time zone of the network. Once the domainname is acquired, the server will determine whether the domain is aneducational, military, governmental network and for non-U.S. basednetworks what country the network is located in through the extension.

However, it should be noted that some networks cover broad geographicareas and that further checking needs to be done to ensure that the datamay be inaccurate. This can be done by performing a trace routeoperation to trace the network topology back to the network beingexamined. If the last two or three nodes on the trace show as being froma given region, the chances are high that the specific user on a networkis located in that geographic area. Thus, reverse traces can be used toconfirm location with a database for geographic locations. By checkingtelephone directories and other sources, the specific location for suchusers may be found by looking up the locations where the owner of thedomain name has facilities and using the one closest to the outcome ofthe trace back step If the information for a given user is differentthan the location of the domain based upon the trace back, it is thisaddress and location information that is then used.

Further for each domain that is found, a determination must be made asto whether the domain is an Internet Service Provider (ISP). A list ofdomains that are ISP's is compiled manually. For any user having adomain name of an ISP, the user is presumed to be an individual and soonly information relating to that individual are used for the profilingprocess.

Reporting Process

The reporting process uses standard database techniques for generatingany desired reports. For example, reports showing the number of viewingsand click throughs of various advertisements may be generated along withreports showing the click through rates relative to the matchingcriteria. Also, reports on the SI can be readily generated.

In addition to using the domain profiling process and loggingadvertisement clicked on by individual users and the pages beingaccessed by users of affiliate web sites, in addition surveying may beused. Further, for those survey respondents who are responding fornon-ISP users discussed above, the results of the survey can beattributed to others on the same network. This provides furtherinformation for targeting the display of the advertisements.

Of course, those of skill in the field will understand that thedisclosed techniques need not just be confined to Internet advertisingbut will work on other communication networks and private on lineservices such as CompuServe and America On Line. In addition, whilespecific user and domain profile information and matching criteria arediscussed, it will be obvious to those of ordinary skill in the fieldthat the specific type of user and domain name information profiled andused as matching criteria may include other or different criteria. Inaddition, while the specific examples are for IP networks, the sameconcepts can be applied to virtual LAN's such that a VLAN is theequivalent of a domain or on IPX based protocols or other networkprotocols.

Still further, rather than using cookies or IP addresses or othernetwork addresses to identify the users, digital signatures orcertificates may be used. In addition, a log in technique may be usedwhereby when users first access an affiliated web site, the user isassigned through a log in procedure a unique identifier and a log inname. When the user subsequently accesses either the same or a differentaffiliated web site, the user logs in using the unique identifier,thereby ensuring that users can be identified notwithstanding proxyservers or different users using the same computer.

Still further, those of ordinary skill in the field will also understandthat while the advertising server, the affiliate web site and theadvertiser's web site are described as being in different geographiclocations, that is not required. Still further, while the advertisingserver process, reporting process, derive profile process and managementprocess are described as being implemented on one computer platformperforming all of the above described functions, it is readilyunderstood by those of skill that any or all of these functions may beimplemented on one or more different computers and further that theseprocesses may be performed at different nodes on the network.

1. An apparatus for advertising, comprising: a processor; a memorystoring instructions for a derive profile process adapted to be executedby said processor to collect information based upon a plurality ofadvertisement requests received from a user node; a database that storessaid information; a memory storing instructions for an advertisementserver process adapted to be executed by said processor to select, inresponse to an advertisement request, an advertisement based upon saidinformation collected by said derive profile process stored in saiddatabase, wherein said advertisement request is generated by the usernode in response to processing a link received from a first affiliatenode in response to a prior content request sent from said user node tosaid first affiliate node, and wherein said advertisement is associatedwith a second affiliate node; a memory storing instructions for amanagement process adapted to be executed by said processor to updateadvertisements available to be selected by said advertisement serverprocess; and a memory storing instructions for a report process adaptedto be executed by said processor to generate a report about theplacement of advertisements.
 2. The apparatus of claim 1, wherein saidinstructions for said advertisement server process are further adaptedto be executed to send said selected advertisement to said user node fordisplay.
 3. The apparatus of claim 2, wherein said instructions for saidadvertisement server process are further adapted to be executed toreceive from said user node a click through request for informationabout the second affiliate node associated with said selectedadvertisement.
 4. The apparatus of claim 3, wherein said instructionsfor said advertisement server process are further adapted to be executedto send a network address for said second affiliate node to said usernode in response to said click-though request.
 5. The apparatus of claim3, wherein said stored information includes information about a priorclick-through request received from said user node.
 6. The apparatus ofclaim 1, wherein said instructions for said derive profile process areadapted to be executed to perform a reverse domain name lookup basedupon an Internet Protocol address associated with one of said pluralityof advertisement requests.
 7. A computer-implemented method comprising:receiving, at an ad server computer, a plurality of advertisementrequests from a user node, each advertisement request being generated bythe user node in response to processing a link received from a firstaffiliate node in response to a prior content request sent from the usernode to the first affiliate node; collecting information based on theadvertisement requests; selecting, by the ad server computer in responseto an advertisement request, an advertisement based upon the collectedinformation, the advertisement being associated with a second affiliatenode; and sending, by the ad server computer, the selected advertisementto the user node for display.
 8. The computer-implemented method ofclaim 7, further comprising updating advertisements available to beselected.
 9. The computer-implemented method of claim 7, furthercomprising generating a report about a placement of advertisements. 10.The computer-implemented method of claim 7, wherein the informationincludes a domain type.
 11. The computer-implemented method of claim 7,further comprising receiving from the user node a click through requestfor information about the second affiliate node associated with aselected advertisement.
 12. The computer-implemented method of claim 11,further comprising sending a network address for the second affiliatenode to the user node in response to the click-though request.
 13. Thecomputer-implemented method of claim 7, wherein the information includesinformation about a prior click-through request received from the usernode.
 14. The computer-implemented method of claim 7, further comprisingperforming a reverse domain name lookup based upon an Internet Protocoladdress associated with one of the plurality of advertisement requests.15. The computer-implemented method of claim 7, wherein selecting anadvertisement based upon the collected information comprises selectingan advertisement from among advertisements associated with the affiliatenode.
 16. The computer-implemented method of claim 7, wherein sendingthe selected advertisement to the user node for display comprisessending the selected advertisement to the user node for compositedisplay with content requested from the first affiliate node.
 17. Thecomputer-implemented method of claim 9, wherein generating a reportabout a placement of advertisements comprises associating an indicationof the content of the first affiliate node for which the advertisementwas selected for composite display with information regarding userinteraction with the selected advertisement.
 18. Thecomputer-implemented method of claim 17, wherein the indicationindicates a web page of the first affiliate node in which contentrequested by the user node is included.
 19. The computer-implementedmethod of claim 8, wherein updating advertisements available to beselected comprises updating, based on the selection of theadvertisement, a number of times that the advertisement has been viewedby all users.
 20. The apparatus of claim 1, wherein the advertisementserver process is adapted to select an advertisement from amongadvertisements associated with the affiliate node.
 21. The apparatus ofclaim 2, wherein the advertisement server process is adapted to send theselected advertisement to the user node for composite display withcontent requested from the first affiliate node.
 22. The apparatus ofclaim 1, wherein the report process is adapted to associate anindication of the content of the first affiliate node for which theadvertisement was selected for composite display with informationregarding user interaction with the selected advertisement.
 23. Theapparatus of claim 1, wherein the management process is adapted toupdate, based on the selection of the advertisement, a number of timesthat the advertisement has been viewed by all users.